The creators of Avatar: The Last Airbender have finally come forward to answer the question that has been on every fan's mind: why was Bosco just a bear? The show follows the journey of a young boy named Aang and his friends as they travel the globe in order to help Aang master all four elements (water, earth, fire, and air) in order to defeat the Fire Lord and put an end to the 100 year war. It's a deeply fantastical world filled with people who can bend elements to their will, spirits that travel between worlds, and hybrid animals that capture the imagination. Among these animals are sky bison that soar through the air with ease, badger moles who were the first earthbenders, and Bosco, who is just a bear.

Bosco appears in season two of the show as the Earth King's pet and companion. When the characters first hear of him, they are absolutely perplexed and don't quite understand what he is. When Katara reads a letter that the King is having a celebration at the palace "for his pet bear," the gang launches into a series of assumptions about what type of bear it could be: platypus bear, skunk bear, armadillo bear, etc. before Katara shrugs and says "just...bear." The scene became a favorite to quote among fans as the idea of something being normal for once was just about the most unexpected thing the writers could do.

Related: Avatar: How The Show Got Away With Being So Dark

In an episode of Nickelodeon's Avatar: Braving the Elements podcast, the show's creators, Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, sat down to discuss, among other things, how exactly Bosco the bear came to be. Essentially, Bosco is just a bear because the writers thought it would be funny. With an entire world made up of fantastical creatures and episodes upon episodes leading up to the reveal of the inner Earth Kingdom, the writers thought it would be really funny for the main characters to run into a plain old bear. Read Konietzko's explanation below:

This is when you have a bunch of really smart writers who went to Ivy League schools and stuff. First they're like 'hybrid animals?! We gotta do a bunch of jokes about that,' and then they're like 'wait, let's do a joke about not having a hybrid animal. That's it's own joke.'

Avatar Earth King Bear

In the same conversation, he also revealed that Bosco was named after the dog of a woman named Lisa who worked on the show, not as a nod to Dante Basco who voiced Prince Zuko in Avatar: The Last Airbender and General Iroh II in The Legend of Korra and is one of the hosts of the podcast. The show's creators looked for inspiration all throughout their office and would often make characters based on people they knew in real life. In the interview, Konietzko would go on to explain that Lisa's other dog inspired the Shirshu while June and Mai were both inspired by Lisa herself. Part of what made the two shows so great was the amount of care put into them and the fact that the creators were able to have fun and literally put themselves into the show was likely a big part of that.

With the future of the Avatar Universe looking bright despite the back and forth with Netflix about a live-action series, fans can look forward to even more fantastical creations filled with heart, including crazy hybrid animals and maybe even a bear or two. Konietzko even joked with the podcast hosts about a spin-off series about one of his favorite creatures, the eel hound. Although an all eel hound show is probably not in the works, they will most likely be making more appearances sometime soon.

Next: Avatar: Biggest Questions The New Last Airbender Movie Can Answer

Source: Avatar: Braving the Elements